FAKE ELECTRONIC PARTS

Hello to all members,

It has come to my attention of the proliferation of fake electronic parts specially in packages of TO-92 and TO220. <_< Before they came out in the transistors and NOW they have come up with fake fix voltage regulators, again in the TO220 package. Am not sure where it originates. :unsure: What's disturbing besides the poor performance & durability, it is also being SOLD AT THE SAME PRICE LEVEL WITH GENUINE PARTS! :angry:

For this I totally blame the store who sells this fake products. It is proliferating quite fast here in Asia. Am not sure what is the situation in the USA or EUROPE or even in AUSTRALIA.

As per report here the fake regulator common malfunction is short circuit and easily opens, when the device is operated at near maximum current parameter. it works fine when it is derated at 50% of its max. current parmeter. It also works fine when you are dropping voltages from 6v to 9v only. anything in excess of that shortens the life expectancy of the device.

I hope this will serve as notice to all.

Feedback is most welcome.

moz

 

Thanks moz.

Not being on this side of the electronics industry, I don't come into contact with components on a daily basis. Having said that I have not heard of such components coming into the European (or particularly the UK) market. Its development come be the same as that of fake software, where there is a substantial uptake in the Asian markets, with smaller fractions in the US and European markets. It is interesting you mention that they are being sold at the same price a genuine products. This is something that should be intriguing to see how it develops in the coming years.

All in all, fake products of any kind are a major concern for any industry, and business must look at ways of driving down such rogue elements to to fringes of the market as much as possible.

Dave

 

We manufacture components for factory automation systems and we rely on our distributors to deliver the parts we order and pay for. In the past twelve years we have had occasional "quality" problems which have been resoved quickly and expeditiously with the distributors taking the hit. I'm not sure if "fake" and "poor quality" are the same thing. I am curious to know if the parts in the TO-92 and TO-220 packages have maufacturers markings or are those "fake" or counterfeit as well?

 

I had similar experiences with fake components, mainly in Asia. They were mostly re-marking of similar lower specced parts to higher ones or substituting other low quality devices for branded ones, which seemed to occur mainly with discrete parts (BJT and MOSFET), voltage regulators and standard logic ICs. They were, at that time, easily identified by the low quality of markings (paint transfers as opposed to laser markings which were rubbed-off easily, weren't clear and weren't situated correctly) and low quality packagings and pins for subtituted devices.

Once or twice, I also encountered the ultimate fake devices which were altogether different devices re-marked to other devices. These were mainly expensive device such as large digital ICs and they obviously refused to work as intended! (or they maybe empty packagings or test-rejects).

ST, TI, MOT, NSC and Philips seemed to be the ones popularly targeted, and a lot of fake Sony logic controllers for consumer electronics were doing the round as well.

 

When you say "similar experiences in Asia", do you mean that you were physically in Asia when the transaction happened or were you ordering from an Asian distributor or manufacturer?

It would certainly give one pause, about offshore manufacturing. A box full of electronic bricks is about as useless a thing as I can think of.

 

I was physically there, and it wasn't just small shops that sold these things, there were a few larger ones and distributors too.

 

Hello again,

Here in my city I have already blacklisted 2 electronic stores selling fake and low quality part and they are big stores ha! So far I have not yet encountered those fake or low quality from my main foreign suppliers (RS Component & DigiKey). I pity those who are buying this part for they do know how to scrutinize and they usually get the blame by the store they get it from.

as what n9235 has mentioned it is usually of poor markings. but to the uninitiated it easily passes thru as genuine.

so far i have not yet encountered a fake mosfet. likewise on logic devices since am not a frequent user.

Since our topic is about fake parts, electro caps are also there. values being faked starts at the 3300uf and upwards. I have several technician friends who howls on this things.

moz

 

We had this problem show up in aviation as non standard hardware. This type of thing could cost lives.

 

Many moons ago when TTL logic was still fairly costly and yields stunk, manufacturers would sell parts that failed testing in some respect, to reclaimers who supposedly reclaimed the (then) valuable alloys and sometimes gold.
Some of these parts weren't reclaimed but sold as quality parts to unsuspecting larger buyers.

A company I later owned, rented space to one of these 'recyclers' until they had burned so many they disappeared quite suddenly.

It is possible that this practice still exists and even buying from an authorized distributor is no absolute protection against this occurring. The big guys will replace the parts but the customer gets to eat the warranty and repair costs that accrue.

 

Hello folks, I purchase well over a million in electronic parts annually (a lot for some people and only a little for others) and also have occasional problems being stuck with counterfeit parts. Some vendors have been excellent with returning them but some of the others here in the US are not so willing to take back the parts, especially when they are non-stock items from the vendor. My main problems are after I just built 100+ specialized high-temperature board assemblies and they all start to fail acceptance testing. Not only do I loose a lot of money in the testing but now I have to re-work the assemblies and sometimes incur irrepairable damage to my boards such as lifted pads or burned boards. So not only do I loose the parts - I loose the entire board. A 10 or so board loss means that I just lost the equivalent of buying a new car. My best solution is to only purchase from the manufacturer's authorized vendors, however, this is not always possible due to long lead times holding up my deliveries. Sometimes I will have a buyer get something off eBay or search through e-surplusinventory.com if we need it now and the manufacturing lead time is 14 weeks. I have a tight inspection process on my incoming parts but sometimes it is not tight enough because I have to balance it with the cost of manufacturing since all additional touch-labor comes right out of the profit. So my best suggestion to you all is to go with authorized vendors whenever possible and to have increased incoming inspection in all other cases. Ed.

 

That is why China and Korea are never going to be close to Japan in any market and does not matter how hard they try.

 

Folks, another thing to watch over is your parts obsolence. As soon as a part on your board assembly becomes obsolete and the lifetime buy is over, the counterfeiter comes in and a broker will suddenly have access to these parts. They know you need them and will pay a lot for them because re-design is expensive (engineering new pc layouts, circuit topologies, new-design qualification, new test procedures, refitting the assembly line and so on). I have an MRP software that helps me with inventory forcasting to reduce the obsolence effect. It's a hugh and expensive gamble and sometimes end up with a lot of excess parts to sell off when re-design is my only option. Electronic parts counterfeiters are equivalent to currency counterfeiters and should be treated identically in a court of law - give them a fair trial followed by a fair hanging. It would not be so bad if they could make the parts identical to the original, but sometimes the counterfeits have no internal dice - just a leadframe only. Those are the counterfeiters that should be hung first and then tried afterwards. We have found that for most of the counterfeit parts the markings will wash off with Flux-off, tech spray or whatever defluxing chemical you are using. It either washes completely off or thins somewhat. The counterfeit parts often work well at room temperature but fail environmental screening, so there are varying degrees of counterfeit parts out there. Some "counterfeiters" are not really counterfeiters but companies who bought the rights to manufacture an obsolete part from the original manufacturer but do not yet have their process up to par with the original. Ed.

 

There are photos of fake electronic parts on the internet showing power transistors with their chip bonded to the metal case with bits of string and chewing gum.

 

After all i have bought only now i realized i might have purchase a lot of fake electronic components name transistors, voltage regulators, capacitors, etc...this is because i was frustrated with my voltage regulator which output voltage inconsistently...I have LM7805CV voltage regulator that sometimes it goes 4.9 v and other times it goes up to 5 v and now its 2.7 volts i am testing directly without additional component using 12 volt battery. i couldn't be wrong because i've tested over and over again on 2 of them...its very frustrating!! Of course they are cheap but if it is have no use whats the point cheap doesn't count anymore and it is same as complete rubbish

 

I Bought 2-3 times a bag of PUT 2N6027 from China (different sellers on E-bay)... never worked! It was a nigthmare figure out that was not my fault during the Make:Electronics reading.

 

Unijunction transistor? They haven't been made in years (even in 2006, when this thread started). Anyway, it is easy to make one out of two transistors - an NPN and a PNP. I use 2N3904 and 2N3906 to make mine. There may also be a resistor thrown in the mix somewhere - it's been a while since I used (made) one.

 

Sorry about that i just looking for a thread searching whether my components are fake...now you can close or delete this post as you please